Mors Mortis Museum is proud to feature Dr. Angela Stienne who will contribute to the Public Education and Engagement in Museums and Heritage section of the upcoming Routledge handbook: Museums, Heritage, and Death with her work titled: Exploring mummy stories in museums: storytelling, science communication and the stories we (do not) tell.
Stienne says she became interested in death related topics when she decided she wanted to be an egyptologist when she was 13. “I initially wanted to study ancient Egyptian religion, but when I was 19 I started working at the Louvre in the summer and I became really curious about people’s behaviour when meeting the only Egyptian mummy on display at the time. This coupled with my undergraduate studies made me write my BA dissertation on the display of mummies, and I then moved to do museum studies! I got an MA, a PhD and did a postdoc on all the displays of Egyptian mummies and my first book, Mummified, comes out next year!”
All my work has been about dead people, and yet many visitors and researchers seem to miss the fact that Egyptian mummies are just that: death.
Dr. Stienne says that her dearest memory was her summer placement in the Louvre in the Egyprian Department. “I was only 23 and I spent two months there and it was a dream to be in the corridor where Champollion used to work but it also solidified my desire to continue my studies and to do more public engagement.” She also says that “All my work has been about dead people, and yet many visitors and researchers seem to miss the fact that Egyptian mummies are just that: death. They have been objectified for so long, so this is what I try to do, recentre the conversation by engaging with the public.”
Her favorite museum is the Museo Egizio in Turin from 2019. “I was very impressed with their commitment to inclusion— from free entry for refugees to panels being translated into arabic. I look up to this museum a lot.”
You can follow Dr. Angela Stienne on Twitter @angela_stienne and on Facebook: facebook.com/mummystories. On Mummy Stories, individuals from around the world can send their own stories of engaging with human remains!
By Jesse Morgan, a Communication and Photography Student at Coastal Carolina University, USA.
Mors Mortis Museum 